I fail to see the importance of disparaging scientists without degrees.  The role of the citizen scientist has increased, not lessened. Beekeepers especially have been avidly pursuing science in their role as caretakers of the primary pollinator of the world. 

This is not specifically about Bee-L but it seems to resonate:

Wider discussions occur, which include interactions of the many risk factors causing honey bee losses, the specifics of calculating and reporting colony losses and the impact on crop pollination, including conservation of what are called “plant-pollinator mutualisms.” There are very few data concerning the latter topic, which includes shifting plant phenologies due to accelerated climate change and how populations of pollinating organisms must adapt if affected plants are to survive and thrive. 

One note of optimism is the increasing activity of groups of citizen scientists assisting in collecting data on phenomena like monarch butterfly migration. These should generate much more data than collected by scientists alone, providing a wider base of potential analysis. This will also be helped by an increasing number of people who are becoming small-scale beekeepers, and as part of this activity, realizing how important their activities are in terms of both plant and human health.

M. T. Sanford
Florida Entomologist 95(1):242-243. 2012 

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Citizen Science

Quick Facts
	• More than 60 scientific papers have used Cornell Lab citizen-science data since 1997
	• 97,331 checklists reported from the four-day Great Backyard Bird Count in 2010
	• More than 96,000 nesting attempts reported to the Cornell Lab since 1997
	• 1,000,000 bird observations reported to eBird on average each month
	• More than 80,000,000 bird observations in the Avian Knowledge Network

Each day, bird watchers report tens of thousands of bird observations to citizen-science projects at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, contributing to the world’s most dynamic and powerful source of information on birds. The Cornell Lab has been at the forefront of citizen science since 1966, and continues to innovate by creating online tools enabling people to share and explore their data. Today, the birding community taps into millions of records to see how their own sightings fit into the continental picture, and scientists analyze the data to reveal striking changes in the movements, distributions, and numbers of birds through time.

More than 200,000 people contribute to the Cornell Lab’s citizen-science projects each year, gathering data on a vast scale once unimaginable. Scientists use these data to determine how birds are affected by habitat loss, pollution, and disease. They trace bird migration and document long-term changes in bird numbers continentwide. The results have been used to create management guidelines for birds, investigate the effects of acid rain and climate change, and advocate for the protection of declining species.

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/page.aspx?pid=1664

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